These games are build with a budged so high they either have to rival overwatch in its glory days or they get scrapped and written off as a loss since they will never be profitable.

Triple A studios have arrived in the corporate world a while ago were long term profits are irrelevant if your quarterly earnings aren't what the investors want.

Gambling, pretty much. They go all in on a bet that it will explode and make tons of money, take out loans based on that expectation, setting themselves in a position where either it is a major success or it is an utter failure, no in between.

The gaming market is so saturated these days that it's kinda baffling this approach is still being taken. Like I hadn't even heard of this game before this.

They should have learned from Marvel Rivals and used an already well-known IP and all the thighs and tits they can get their hands on. You can't just make a shitty game and expect it to sell, you have to manipulate your players into thinking it's more than just a shitty game

I'm convinced it is some sort of insurance fraud a la The Producers. They found a way to make more money by flopping HARD than getting middling success, and flopping hard is a LOT LESS work. If their choice is A) spend a lot of money and time making a really good game that will capture the attention of the entire market; or B) spend a bit of money and time making something that looks convincingly like a real attempt at making a good game to some corpo-fuckwits at an insurance company and then nuke it hours after release... Well. Yea, they'll do the second one.

It's insane that this isn't a requirement for shutting down/delisting a game.

From how I understand it, TenCent pulled funding in the studio as soon as the game didn't hit its metric goals, they fired all but 11 people working on the game last month. If they have time to Port it, that would be awesome to make it open source, but I have a feeling the skeleton crew left probably doesn't have the ability.

I expect whoever made the decision is embarrassed and don't want a visible movement to their hubris.

Seriously, I didn't even realize it was the name of the game. I thought maybe a dev studio was shutting down.

3.2 Concords almost sounds good. For comparison, Black Ops 2 is currently at 347 Concords, and Team Fortress 2 is at 480

Well apparently it didn't pay out for them, so you aren't the only one

Elden Ring: Nightreign is successful so far. But it's quite different from default live-service games, since a lot of content is available in single-player mode too.

"Player feedback" is part of what makes most live services shit.

I don't want reddit designing my game.

And yet Helldivers 2 comes out in 2024 and sets the world on fire. Seems to me that gaming is perfectly fine with live service as long as it's in line with community expectations and not s soulless cash grab.

I can't help but think there's money in acquiring all these completed assets and coming up with a story based single player game around them.

The creative part is already done! Pop it into a non-GaaS structure and see what happens!

I'd have LOVED to explore the world of Brink and it was set up to be another Assassin's Creed Assassins vs. Templars vibe... and it all fell apart...

I'm not interested either way, but my money says it'll do okay

Marathon is probably life or death for Bungie. Sony can't exactly afford to put out a mid game after spending so much on the studio... and "mid" is exactly what Marathon felt like. Just like so many copycats during the battle royale boom.

I don't think it will fail (or if it does, not as hard as Highguard), but unless it manages to stand out from the Tarkov/Arc Raiders/Hunt: Showdown oligopoly, it won't bring in the numbers to please Sony.